Congratulations and Happy Anniversary! A splendid achievement and
thanks for sharing.

It is a pity that the RoyMetSoc do not have some life time
achievement award/recognition. Phillip if you are reading perhaps
something could be put forward?

As you say you span a very interesting period in the collection,
processing and modelling of data at the expense of local knowledge,
practical experience etc.


Your post actually made me feel young which does not happen often
these days. My PhD research started in 1985 which I class as the start
of my professional career so I am not quite up to 26 years. I doubt,
I will be professionally active in 24 years time! If active in any
way!

So your generation will the last to clock up 50 years in the business
I believe.


All the best,

Andy


On 3 Aug 2011 07:59:01 GMT, "Norman" wrote:

It's probably of little interest to anyone but me but I can't let this
anniversary pass without mention.

50 years ago today I started work in the Met Office at Prestwick Airport. I've
been working full-time in meteorology ever since and I've got no thoughts of
retiring yet. For the first 35 years I was an employee:

1961-1967 Met Office
1967-1970 Australian Bureau of Meteorology
1970-1980 Imcos Marine
1980-1996 Noble Denton

Since 1996 I have been self-employed.

I consider that I have been extremely fortunate to have been able to spend a
lifetime being paid to indulge in a hobby! My wife says I've never done a real
days work in my life. My career has spanned what I think has been a most
interesting phase in the development of the science of meteorology. I have
worked in all continents other than South America. Operationally we have gone
from 5 characters per second teletype to the computerised world we are all
familiar with today. Perhaps a lot of the fun has gone out of the job in recent
years and certainly a great deal of the local knowledge and experience has
gone. And, despite all of the advances, consistent accurate forecasting of
local detail for the next 12-24 hours has not yet been achieved.

I've enjoyed all parts of my career but I have particularly fond memories of
the 3 years I spent on the Ocean Weather Ships in the mid-1960s. By chance, I
have discovered that another ex-Weather Ship metman from the mid-60s, Bill
Howard, lives only 200 yards from me. It's a small world.

Today, I have an incredible array of "tools" available to look at both the
real-time weather and the historical weather. The subject has just as much
fascination for me today as it had 50 years ago. I look forward to many more
years of work and hobby!